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Thursday, April 23, 2015

22 of 30: "Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun" by Heather McHugh

A very Wednesday poem (one of my all-time favorites) by Heather McHugh, "Ghazal of the Better-Unbegun":

A book is a suicide postponed.
— Cioran
Too volatile, am I? too voluble? too much a word-person?
I blame the soup: I’m a primordially
stirred person.

Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.

The sound I make is sympathy’s: sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
heard person.

I need a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.
The mirror’s not convincing — that at-best in-
ferred person.

As time’s revealing gets revolting, I start looking out.
Look in and what you see is one unholy
blurred person.

The only cure for birth one doesn’t love to contemplate.
Better to be an unsung song, an unoc-
curred person.

McHugh, you’ll be the death of me — each self and second studied!
Addressing you like this, I’m halfway to the
third person.


22 of 30. Happy National Poetry Month!